05 May 2010

Alan Johnson comes a close second to Tony Blair in the art of communication.

Here is the three-times-election-winner explaining why his so-called heir had to spend the penultimate night before polling day travelling around the country:

The issue for voters is to decide whether the Tories have really changed…when you look at the Tory party today and take it as a whole, you will be going back to what you had before, and if you want to do that, do so with your eyes open.

No one wants an over-heavy state, but there is an element of what the Conservatives are saying that almost suggests that government has no role to play, or it is down to volunteering.

To go out of an alliance with Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy and to go into an alliance with a pretty fringe rightwing group. That is odd. Why would you want to do that? That is how we remember the Tories.

Our foreign policy becomes just one endless wrangle with Europe. It is not just that it leads to internal convulsions in the Tory party, it ends up affecting the country, at a time when the world is becoming ever more interdependent.

An attitude that says we will take a little Englander approach to Europe is just not smart on any basis – it simply fails to understand the modern world.